


The Doctor's Cot

by TygerTyger



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Origins, tiny bit shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TygerTyger/pseuds/TygerTyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He made it his vow to her on the occasion of her birth. Susan would be as dear to him as the woman whose love and fight brought him through and made him the man he had become, the woman who first introduced him to the agony of loss and grief, the woman who built for him the very cot in which his granddaughter now lay. His mother.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctor's Cot

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about the Doctor’s cot, and I was also thinking a bit about the whole ‘part human on my mother’s side’ thing. This is an origin story of sorts, but mostly it’s about the Doctor’s mother and his relationship with her. I borrowed bits of lore from Lungbarrow, which I haven't read yet, for the record.

**One — Namesake**

 

The Doctor stood waiting as patiently as he could for the door to be answered. The breeze passed through the scented vines on the nearby trellis, making the afternoon fragrant. Apt, thought the Doctor. The world seemed more full of colour too, more than it had in a very long time.

The door opened, and a happy but tired face said, “Father.”

“Where is she? I’ve brought my old cot.” He hoisted the cot and brought it inside heading straight for the living quarters.

“Well, good afternoon to you too, Father!”

The Doctor judged that he was old enough now to get away with such lapses in etiquette, and so continued without further comment. He entered the living quarters, and his eyes instantly found his daughter-in-law sitting in a comfortable chair, cradling his grandchild. “My dear girl, you are a vision,” he said, placing the cot down and approaching her.

“Thank you, Father.”

The Doctor liked that she called him Father, because to him she was as good as a daughter, if not better. His son followed him in and brought the cot over from where the Doctor had left it and placed it next to his wife. “Do you want to do the honours, Father? It is your cot after all.” His daughter-in-law gently passed the baby to the Doctor, and he held her with great care.

“Well, hello you little monkey. I’m your grandfather.”

“We’ve chosen a name for her, by the way,” his son said.

“Oh yes?”

“Susan.”

“Ah.” The Doctor swallowed the lump in his throat.

“You don’t mind, do you?” his daughter-in-law said. “It’s just you always speak so fondly of her, and we’d like her to have a name that means something to us and to the family.”

“Mind? No. Quite the opposite.”

The Doctor placed Susan gently into the cot. “Now child, you shall be as well loved by me, as I loved your namesake.”

He made it his vow to her on the occasion of her birth. Susan would be as dear to him as the woman whose love and fight brought him through and made him the man he had become, the woman who first introduced him to the agony of loss and grief, the woman who built for him the very cot in which his granddaughter now lay. His mother.

 

* * *

 

**Two — Beloved Child**

 

Susan sat cross-legged on her workroom floor, sanding. It began as a way to bring a part of her former life to her new home, but over the past week it became a single-minded obsession. Her child would need somewhere to sleep, and she was going to provide it.   
  
Her husband had told her, before they were married but after they found out about the baby, that there hadn’t been a baby on his planet in centuries. Of course, she laughed at that idea until he explained further. Even then, she didn’t quite believe it until he brought her here, to Gallifrey. After all, Earth wasn’t safe for the first infant Time Lord since Pythia’s curse.   
  
It was true. There were no babies on Gallifrey, not yet at least, and no babies meant no cots, so she did what any prospective mother would have done. She set about building one, to prove to herself that she wouldn’t be completely useless to him—or her, of course—but she felt strongly that it would be the former.

She blew away the sawdust as she heard her husband enter.

“Still at it?” he asked, even though the answer was obvious.

“Could you check my translation for me?” She pushed a large piece of graph paper with compass-drawn circles in his direction.

He crouched and read, then laughed lightly. “Pencil, please.”

She passed him the pencil and watched as he amended the lettering, sweeping perfect circles freehand. “What had I written?” she asked.

“Beloved Centipede.” He put a gentle palm to her cheek and kissed her forehead. “You could have used English, no one would have minded.”

“I know, but I want it to be part of both of us, like he is.”

“Have I told you lately how amazing you are?”

“Yes, as it happens. It’s a shame your family and the High Council don’t agree.”

“They’ll get over it.” He kissed her softly, and she tried to believe him. “I’ll let you get back to it. I know you won’t be satisfied until it’s finished.”

She smiled at him as he left the room, and then let her face fall and her hand move to her abdomen. She wished she could promise her child that she would keep him safe, and that no harm would come to him, but she was never one for making promises she couldn’t keep.

Instead, she placed the graph paper onto the cot and began to mark it for carving. _Beloved Child_ —at least she could promise him that he would be loved.

 

* * *

 

**Three — Womb-born**

 

Susan lay curled on her side, concentrating on the aching of her body rather than that of her heart. They had taken her child. Of course they had. The moment he was born, they took him. She couldn’t stop them, and her husband didn’t even try to. They came with their court order and their promises not to harm him and took him. How could she believe that promise, when their last one was that they wouldn’t take him?

The door creaked open. She closed her eyes and pretended she was asleep. She knew it was her husband and couldn’t bear to look at him. She heard him round the bed and stand over her. He seemed barely fazed when they took the baby. Susan wondered if he was even capable of crying.

“I know you’re awake,” he said.

She kept her eyes shut and turned her back to him.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

There was a sound, not a cry so much as a shout. A protest.

She turned as quickly as her body would allow and saw her husband awkwardly holding their son. She put her arms out, and he quickly passed the infant to her. She checked him over, looking for signs of what they might have done to him.

“They think they have enough information from the blood from the cord, so they probably won’t need—”

“Get out,” she said coolly.

He had the good grace not to question her and did as she said, leaving her alone with her baby. She let herself cry then, holding his cheek to hers and feeling the warmth of him in her arms. She wanted more than anything to take him with her and bring him home to live an ordinary life on Earth. It was impossible of course, but she allowed herself the brief indulgence of imagining herself there, with everyone who knew her and loved her properly. Where no one had even heard the term womb-born.

 

 

* * *

 

**Four — The Gift**

 

The robes sat heavily on her shoulders, and she tried not to betray any emotion as she sat behind the Lord President at the podium. Her child sat calmly in her arms, looking up at her.

“…and of course, this is the first ceremony of its kind in many generations, but now due to this newest Gallifreyan life, we hope that it will be the first of countless to come. We will be delaying any further looming until the modification has been perfected, and once applied we will see our final generation of loomed individuals.”

There was a murmur from the seated crowd. The Lord President raised his hand. “But that is for another day. Today is a day of celebration.” He turned and gestured to the family behind him. Susan’s husband took her elbow and they stood. She could feel the sweat bead under her headdress. The Lord President continued to address the assembled dignitaries. “As a gesture of fellowship with our friend Susan and what she has brought to our society, she will complete the ceremony.”

Susan stepped forward and stood next to the Lord President. “Child of Gallifrey,” he began, placing a palm on the infant’s head. “I dedicate you to the House of Lungbarrow, and name you…” He nodded to Susan.

She dropped her head to her child’s ear and whispered his name to him, and him alone.

“I’m sorry,” said the Lord President, “I didn’t quite—”

“No, you didn’t.” She looked him in the eye until he laughed nervously and said simply, “Welcome, little one.”

 

 ***

 

Susan allowed her husband to place their child into his cot and showed him how to soothe him to sleep. The baby’s fell softly closed.

“I forgive you,” Susan said.

He took her hands immediately and kissed them each in turn. When he looked up, she could see tears glisten. Good, she thought, and placed a lingering kiss on his cheek.

He looked down at his son sleeping. “So, what did we name him?”

She shook her head. “That’s between the me and him. If he chooses to tell you when he’s older, that’s his business.”

Her husband frowned. She knew that he wouldn’t argue with her, he wanted to make her happy now after what had happened at the birth. “What will I call him then? What will I tell people his name is when they ask?”

“Baby? Sonny? You’ll think of something, I’m sure. You’re clever like that.”

“Theta Sigma is his assignation in Lungbarrow. I’ll use that for now, until I think of something more suitable.”

“See,” she said, “clever.”

Her husband toyed with the stars she had made from offcuts, which now hung above their sleeping child’s head. “I want him to wonder,” she volunteered. “I want him to look to the heavens and wonder about that part of him that’s not from here.” If she were being entirely honest, she wanted him to long to see it. She wanted him to share her own desire to leave Gallifrey. She wanted him to be hers more than anyone else’s, even his father’s.

 

* * *

 

**Five — Her Legacy**

 

“Susan!”

She heard her husband’s call before the inevitable rush of footsteps and slamming of doors. She closed her book and put it to one side and waited. There was no point in going looking for trouble when it was clearly on its way to you.

The door swung open and her son raced in and bounced onto her lap. “Well, hello,” she just managed to say before her followed, bringing a foul mood with him.

“Your son was asked to leave his lessons today for disrupting the class.”

She looked down at the boy, who was making a poor fist of seeming contrite. “I notice that you’re my son when you’re being disruptive.”

“Susan—” Her husband made exasperated sigh. “He’s supposed to start at the academy next year. I don’t see how it’s going to be possible for him to be in a classroom of pupils, if he can’t behave in his one-on-one lessons.”

“What exactly was he doing?”

“I was asking questions, Mummy.”

“He was repeatedly interrupting the lesson, Susan. How is he supposed to get up to speed with the curriculum if he can’t concentrate enough to listen for an hour at a time?”

“Let me talk to him,” she said, and waited for her husband to leave.

He always tried to leave it to her if he could. He seemed to assume that any parenting challenges stemmed from his son’s human side, of which he claimed to be no expert. Susan didn’t mind. It meant she could keep her dear little ally closer.

People were generally kind on Gallifrey. She could tell that they tried not to treat her like an outsider, but they were very set in their own ways. She knew that people weren’t being intentionally insensitive when they made remarks like, “Isn’t it a blessing that he’s so much like his father,” or, “I can’t see much of you in him, Susan.”

They were right, to a point. The Time Lord genes seemed to blow hers out of the water. Once he grew to a child, his physical development slowed and started to age along with his peers. He was exceptionally bright, even for a Time Lord, her husband said. He even once joked, “Maybe you’ll grow up to be Lord President some day, Theta.” Susan laughed at that, but inwardly she shuddered at the thought.

But she knew her son better than anyone, and she could see herself in him, even if no one else could. The rebel in him, the adventurer, the outlaw, his complete absence of fear, it was all hers. That, and the single heart that beat in his chest. The high council would grant him regenerations as a matter of course, once he came of age, but whether or not they would work without a second heart would remain to be seen. She hoped so; there was far too much out there to see in one lifetime.

Susan looked down at her child who was playing with a long strand of her auburn hair. “Tell me about today,” she said, “don’t leave anything out.”

He told her about his walk to lessons and the new saplings planted outside of his tutor’s house, and how he’d only wanted to know more about Gallifreyan history, which was why he kept asking questions. “I think he told me to go home because he didn’t know the answers and needed time to look them up,” he said.

Susan laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“Should I apologise to Father?”

“No, you can leave that to me. I’ll talk to him.” She pushed her son’s hair off his forehead. “He loves you. Don’t forget that.”

“I know. I won’t.”

“Good. Now off you go and look up the answers to your questions yourself. There won’t always be someone to find them for you.”

He hopped down from her lap and left the room at a more respectable pace than that at which entered. She thought of her own father, who had told her once that, no matter how old she got, she would always be a child to him. It was the same for her, except a little more literally. It was impossible for her to live long enough to meet the man he would become. She hoped the time she did have would be enough.

 

 

* * *

 

**Six — The Empty Cot**

 

The Doctor hurried down the TARDIS corridor towards his personal storage room to find the cot for the Ponds. He’d picked it up at some point, with the intention of giving it to Susan as a gift when he went back to her. He thought a lot about what he’d say to her when he met her again. “Sorry, for not saying goodbye,” normally popped into his head, but how to explain that he couldn’t bring himself to? It hurt enough to have to do it, never mind make words to go around the act.

He blustered to himself about returning some day, but he had never managed it. Then the Time War happened and _haven’t yet_ became _couldn’t ever._ The cot still sat empty as ever in storage. It might as well be of some use to someone. He hoisted it up and carried it back through the TARDIS to the Ponds.

“Who slept in here?” Amy asked him as he placed Melody down to sleep, just as he had with Susan so many years earlier. His throat tightened, and he chose to concentrate on Melody’s delighted coos about his hair instead. He’d tell Amy about his granddaughter some other day.

 

***

 

Melody was gone. He tried to concentrate his anger on River. He trusted her, and she let him down, let Amy and Rory down. Of course she had to draw his attention to the conspicuously empty cot he had been trying not to look at. A cheap distraction trick. Well, it wouldn’t work.

“Tell me who you are.”

She took his hand and in both of hers, and placed it onto the cot. “I am telling you. Can’t you read?”

His thoughts fell away and were replaced by new ones as he read the words his own mother had inscribed when he lived inside her— _Beloved Child_.

He looked at River, not daring to believe that it could be true, but her eyes confirmed it. Melody Pond, child of his best friends and part Time Lord was standing in front of him. The woman he had been trying desperately, and failing spectacularly, not to fall in love with was all of these things.

Joy burst so violently in his chest that he was sure that anyone looking could see it. All was not lost. He knew exactly where to find Melody. The cot wouldn’t be empty forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm as surprised as anyone that I finished a fic. :P


End file.
